Fourth Sunday of Easter, 2023
The world of today is noisy.
We are constantly faced with all types of noise, and not just auditory ‘noise’ either, but all types of noise.
Visual noise, emotional noise, spiritual noise. Perhaps, we might even say political noise.
It’s often hard to escape, and opposing it has become a sort of Christian trope:
‘Cutting through the noise of the world to hear the voice of the Lord.’
But the trouble comes when it is time to distinguish who’s voice we are listening to.
How can we figure it out? What is it that distinguishes the voice of the Shepherd from the countless other voices which are vying for our attention and control?
Well, the difference is in what the voice is proclaiming.
More exactly, it’s in who and what the voice is proclaiming.
The noise of our fast-paced information age is almost entirely self-directed. Our voices, in the many forms of noise which clutter daily life, are all too often crying our own name, or the name of some particular desire or passion, some cause or momentary fad.
For centuries, when discussing the dangerous voices which seek to mislead us, the Church has expressed three basic categories which all of these counterfeits fit within.
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
Arguably, of those three, the devil is, funnily enough, the one which we understand the best, because we know basically what to look for when determining if it’s his voice we are hearing. We know that language of accusation, of shame, of condemnation, language which prompts us to hate or rage, all of these qualities are characteristic of the voice of the evil one.
The voices of the world and the flesh are often harder to distinguish, and they are tools which the devil uses when his own voice becomes too recognizable.
They are hard to distinguish because these voices prey on two of the most powerful desires of the human heart:
The desire for belonging, and the desire for happiness.
The world speaks as though it is the path to belonging and acceptance, and like the serpent in the garden, invites us to ignore God’s design, His words, and His plan, and to cling instead to the empty, passing values of the modern age.
The flesh, on the other hand, tells us that to be happy, we must give in to each of our passions, feed all of our desires, that we ought never to sacrifice or deny ourselves, even for the sake of others.
Through both of these voices, we can be led to the very danger which Jesus warns against in today’s Gospel.
He says that those who follow His voice will find abundant life, but that other voices seek only to steal and slaughter and destroy.
Isn’t this exactly what we see when we look around us? A world which becomes increasingly narrow, divided, angry? Ideas which are popular one day and are condemned the next, figures or organizations which are held up as our salvation in one instant, and cast down the next. Suffice to say, merely modern attachments.
The British author G. K. Chesterton compares being too deeply invested in the fancies of a particular time period to being too invested in the fashions of a day, he says: “To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as to spend one’s last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned.”
The voice of the Lord, of Our Good Shepherd, is the only voice which never fades, because it is the only voice which knows us perfectly. What is more, His is the only voice which knows what is good, true, and beautiful. It is the only voice which seeks not to destroy but to build up, not to steal but to give, not to slaughter, but to make alive.
Jesus’ voice is the only voice which never gossips or accuses, which never lashes out, which is never petty, never isolating, and only ever speaks truth.
So, let us strive to be undistracted. To recognize and reject the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil, while always seeking to find the good, the true, and the beautiful within all that we encounter.
Because it is in the voice of Jesus, Our Good Shepherd, and only in His voice, that we find abundant life, so let us be alive in Him.
Preached on Sunday, April 30th, 2023 at St. Alexander’s, Morrisonville and St. James’, Cadyville
